Who am I? Who are you? The easy answer can be found on the ID we each carry around in our wallets, but the deeper answer is more difficult to flesh out. I know at my core I struggle with my identity. I look at myself in the mirror and see a woman staring back at me, but what I see are the hurts and beliefs that I wrestle everyday with because my life–this life–is about God and how he wants me to live not about the effects of my youth that created this uneasy sense of wondering ‘who am I?’
For the last few weeks I’ve challenged my own self-perceptions, sense of belonging and confidence within the context of God’s word and I hope you’ve been challenged as well. Today begins a tackling of another subject–one I’d rather avoid if I’m being completely honest, but needing to address: Security.
My security is not found in my ability to perform because I’ve learned that performance and abilities can fail. My security is not in my reputation even though my reputation is important. My security is not in the type of family I come from, my heritage, or my pocketbook, which is a relief because I’m a melting pot of nationalities and my pocket book is usually empty.
The temptation to place my security in temporal things is strong because these are things I can see and gauge and prove to myself that I’m worth something. It’s the compare and contrast thing we do with each other: ‘How am I better than so and so and how am I worse than so and so?’ and so my security rises and lowers based on where the comparison needle lands.
But it’s exhausting, you know? When my security is placed in my own ability or in someone else’s ability, I weave and bob on a floating log in an uncertain river. I go under gasping for breath and come up soaked and shivering, but still clinging to the things that I think will provide my security: performance, people, and pocket money.
I’m learning through mistakes and moments of humility that security has nothing to do with me or with you, but God himself.
What he says about me is more important than how I feel about myself. He says that in Christ, I am chosen, adopted, rescued, complete, and given access to him. This doesn’t change based on the day when I have it all together and I’m rocking the day or the day when I have one giant fail after another.
He says I’m secure in him and this doesn’t change if I have a poor performance, disappoint people, or lost my pocket money. He is the ultimate in security. But how do we begin transferring our misplacement of security in ourselves, and other people to the King of kings and Lord of lords?
It’s allowing three key truths to take root in our heart and allowed to grow.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” Romans 8:1-2
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28
“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39
Satan loves nothing more than to throw my sin in my face and remind me of the shame of it. God says that since I am in Christ Jesus then I’m set free from my sin and I am free to live by him and for him. My security is in knowing that I’m free from the law of sin and death and set free in the law of the Spirit of life.
Life is hard. It just is. There’s pain, cancer, miscarriages, stillborns, death of a loved one, divorce, abuse, or addictions. And sometimes the hard is something we have to face every day and sometimes it’s a memory that lives as though it is our present. Somedays it’s hard to look past our pain to see the possibilities of what is.
And what is is this: you love God, respond to his call and he works things together for good. This concept only works when we frame it with our love and response to what God is wanting to do with our junk. My security lies in trusting God that he will turn my pain into beauty. I have to look at pain or fear or whatever in the eye and trust God with it and as he works in my heart, my insecurity is traded for security.
To understand the depth of God’s love for us can be one of the greatest obstacles to our security in Christ. Our hearts are prone to cynicism. Our minds towards doubt. We want proof and too often life proves that love is expendable. So to wrap our minds around the concept that nothing can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus can feel impossible.
But what if we tried? What if you and I declared that no matter what happens tomorrow at that doctor’s appointment that we will still believe God loves us? What if you and I declared that no matter who wins the presidential election that we will not be separated from the love of God? What if you and I declared that no matter how much pain we are currently experiencing in our private lives that God’s love is still deep and wide?
What would our acceptance of God’s love look like if we separated our circumstances from God’s love for us? It would look a lot like security.
It’s what I long for, and it’s what you long for. I also withhold it from others and myself and so do you.
I’ve been wrestling with my acceptance in Christ because there’s a part I play in it as well: I have to accept what God says.
I can read his truth and his words, but if I don’t believe them, I’m still lost. There’s a difference between knowing truth and believing truth and it’s hard to believe the truth about acceptance.
When I refuse to accept the truth that God says I am set free from darkness, I stumble and fall even though light is nearby. When I refuse to accept redemption, I abdicate my inheritance of forgiveness. When I refuse to accept completeness in Christ, I give up confidence.
I once confessed my insecurity to a close friend and she sat open-mouthed and dared me to deny my statement. I couldn’t and she couldn’t believe it.
I’m good at playing the confident woman, but I shake in my boots and hide behind a smile and a sparkle. I don’t see what my friend sees. I see a messy-haired, scared little girl hoping to be accepted, but believing she won’t be and so I pretend. I pretend I’m full of confidence. I pretend I know what I’m doing. But inside? On the inside I’m afraid you will find out the truth and reject me.
God gives me opportunity after opportunity to strip my confident façade away and fully embrace his acceptance of me because it is only when I rest in his acceptance of me that I am truly confident.
Confident that I’ve been rescued, redeemed, chosen, and given access to the throne room of God. Confidence based in my own ability is shaky and will crumble. It has crumbled. Each time I’m publicly humbled–whether it’s through an editing mistake in a published piece, or my vocals cracking as I lead worship, or singing the wrong lyric at the wrong time–I’m given the opportunity to understand what it’s like to be confident in him.
This past Sunday, as I led worship, I cued the band and the tech team to section three of our opening song. They did their part, but I didn’t. I sang something entirely different. The smiles and laughter in the tech team cued me of my screw up. While the band played their way through my fumbling, I smiled my way through, course corrected, and kept the focus on God.
A few years ago, I would have spent the afternoon berating myself over my ineptness-turning the focus on myself-rather than rejoicing in the ability to learn a lesson in humility and glory.
God doesn’t want to embarrass me, but if I’m prideful in an area, I will be humbled. My confidence should never be placed in my abilities because my abilities are not because of me, but in spite of me. My abilities are gifts from God to be used for him for his people. They have nothing to do with me. They are for his glory.
My confidence is directly related to how well I accept that God accepts me. When I don’t feel accepted, when I feel I’ve disappointed God, either over something little or that thing, like perfect, that keeps cropping up in my life, I reject myself, assuming that God rejects me as well.
I couldn’t be more wrong. He doesn’t reject. He accepts.
Our confidence for living this God-life is directly related to our embracing God’s acceptance of us.
If we embraced this truth, we would confidently leave our old lives behind and embrace the new. We would truly understand amazing grace that’s set our hearts free. We would love without strings. We would confidently walk in the forgiveness God offers rather than in the condemnation we offer ourselves.
Could you imagine the effect you would have in your life if you walked confidently into every situation confident not in your ability to perform, but confident that no matter what others think of you or what you think of yourself that God calls you accepted?
There just might be a revolution.
There would be a revolution in our churches because it wouldn’t be about us, but it would be about following the Holy Spirit wherever he leads.
Our homes and society would revolutionize themselves because our love for each other would flow from the belief that we’re accepted fully and completely by God. We would give our best knowing that God is pleased when we accept and love each other.
“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Colossians 1:13-14 ESV
“For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.” Colossians 2:9-10 ESV
“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:14-16
Confidence is directly related to our belief in God’s acceptance of us. We might struggle with accepting ourselves with all our flaws and mistakes, but God doesn’t. He offers us rescue, redemption, forgiveness, completeness, and access to the throne of God because he accepts us. This is who you are in Christ: accepted beloved one.
I’ve been avoiding this post. I’ve worked on other writing projects and even considered cleaning the floors because I don’t want to address the fact that Junior High may not be 25 years ago, but may be 2.5 days ago and maybe I’m not as mature as I think.
In Christ we are accepted, secure, and significant. Today, and for the next couple of weeks we’ll discuss acceptance and what prevents us from embracing God’s acceptance of us: our self-perception, our sense of belonging, and our confidence.
I’ve struggled with feeling as though I’m on the outside looking in more often than on the inside looking out. Whether I was the new kid in a new school and wondering who I was going to talk to or the friends that shunned me for an entire school year or the group of smart looking women who I would love to get to know, but just can’t seem to penetrate their circle of friends.
These memories and experiences led me to believe that there was something inherently wrong with me. I perceived myself as not good enough.
It was an up-town cafe that showed me just how foolish I was to believe that lie. This little cafe was quaint and cute and oh so chic and I was not, but there I was, fidgeting in my seat, playing with my napkin, eyeing the set of silverware and wondering if I would remember the purpose of all those forks. And I wondered if I’d ever been in a place that used more than one.
I could hear soft music playing and my head kept telling me to relax and let the music wash over me, but my heart–the one where the scared little girl resides– was yelling at me, ‘You’re going to be asked to leave. It’s obvious you don’t fit here. They’re going to show you to the door. Na, na, na, na.’
Silly, isn’t it? But it was very, very true.
Our hearts boss our heads around and we’re left worn out because of the mentalbattle.
So there I was, listening to the fears and lies of my heart, while my head was countering back with, ‘Just relax, sit tall, and don’t cower. You were invited to be here. Heart, hush up and listen to the violin strings. Let them sing a melody to you.’ I willed myself to relax and act normal, but it made me think how my head and my heart do this with God’s word as well.
Our hearts tell us the all-encompassing acceptance of God is too good to be true and our hearts tell us we’re not good enough to be included.
We can read God’s word, which is the truth, but our hearts cannot or will not accept the truth. We have lies that we hear in our hearts that our mind believes and when we encounter the truth, it’s a struggle to embrace the truth. It can go the other way too. Sometime we know the truth in our heads, but our hearts have a hard time receiving what our heads know.
If we’ve struggled with the concept of fatherhood then John 1:12 will be a difficult verse to receive into our heart. But if we want to be set free from the battles that rage in our minds, then we must begin to learn, live, and love this truth:
“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God–” John 1:12
If we’ve struggled in friendships, we sometimes believe we’re not the type of person people want to be friends with. Other times we’ll protect ourselves and allow only a certain amount of access to our heart because our histories have shown us that friends cannot be trusted. The countering truth to this lie (that you’re not the friend type) is John 15:15. Jesus calls you friend. The King of the world, the king of hearts, the Lord of lords counts you as friend.
“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” John 15:15
If our histories hold choices we’re ashamed of and we’re living with long term consequences of those choices then we often believe the lie that they are unforgivable and unforgettable. This is a lie designed to keep us bound in condemnation and if we can be kept in condemnation then we will not understand the beauty of conviction and redemption. Our hearts need to know that through Jesus Christ we have a been made new.
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 5:1
I walked away from that cafe with a crack in my mis-perception of myself and God in his kindness, mercy, and gentleness showed me that in him I have a seat at the table of grace. He showed me that by refusing to accept his truth about me doesn’t make it any less true. What’s true is true and God says we’re accepted.
My heart is believing what my head knows to be true, but sometimes the lies sneak in and I’m back to the outside looking in. Does this ever happen to you? It can happen in a moment and it’s times like these that I preach the truth to myself. I tell myself that I’m God’s child, I’m his friend, and I’ve been made new.
You, my friend, can know this truth in your heart as well. Would you take some time to read these scriptures and make them personal by putting your name in these verses? The next time you feel as though you’re not enough, will you remember these truths?
